Make Wall Street Pay/ Do your Patriotic Duty, Get Arrested/ Poor People's Campaign

A family with bags from a service that provides for people in need in Oswego, N.Y-.NYT

In a nation of vast poverty, inequality, and economic despair , we are now told by "our" government handlers that hundreds of billions of dollars in service cuts must happen to prevent America from sliding into economic ruin.

Under a measure called  sequestration, 1.2 trillion in service cuts will occur  automatically on January 1, 2013, if Congress doesn’t either delay the cuts, drastically cut spending, or raise taxes.

Previous Government bailouts have demonstrated, that major corporations and the rich have vast political resources to insure  their place, far ahead of the line. Yet, the voices of the powerless are always on the defensive, trying to protect the dwindling meager resources we have.

In this age, we don't get to go forward, we fight, not to be pushed too far back.

 I am please to see a coalition of grassroots and faith-based organizations called "Make Wall Street Pay Illinois" demand that Wall Street pay to balance the budget. Equally important, they used civil disobedience, leading to arrests, to demonstrate their resolve.  

On Friday, November 9, eight people entered Senator Dick Durban's Chicago office- paid for by the tax payers, to request a meeting with him, which was denied.  They then refused to leave and were arrested. An hour later, 11 activists holding a banner in the building’s lobby were dragged and carried  away to jail. Dick Durban is considered the  unofficial spokes person for the Democratic Party and is close to the president.

With the election of President Obama, the left has a choice. Either force President Obama, the Democrats, and liberal advocacy groups to wage political war on behalf  of ( and organize) the majority in America, who continue to lose economic ground and tumble into the abyss. Or, they can also continue to tinker around the edges for a paycheck,while the rich continue syphoning the rest of the wealth from this country.

These arrests need to continue and in mass.  This country will only change through civil disobedience.

Every progressive needs to get arrested at east least once, and assume the burden of "waking up" their friends, family, and neighbors to reality that Democracy is now mostly a political illusion to keep the citizenry pacified.

We need a national rescue program for poor people and those barely making it, including a "Federal New Deal" program which includes major debt reduction programs for students, the poor, and the working class. This country is brazen in it's support of the One Percent. Now it's time to support The People. 

Right before Martin Luther King was assassinated he made a monumental pivot  from race to a campaign centered on Economic Justice, called The Poor People's Campaign. 

This movement needs to happen now or our country is lost. 

Meet Mitch Romney, a Solid Gold Cog & I want My 40 Acres and a Mule!

Mitch Romney, a more educated version of Archie Bunker, has yet again publicly expressed the scorn of a certain class of Americans, toward another class of Americans. 

But are democrats accurate in describing his remarks as coming from the One Percent of Americans who control most of the resources in America?  Or, perhaps Romney like a true midwesterner, more represents working class white America? And frankly, his remarks also represent a certain class of the American Black Bourgeoisie who angrily condemned Dr. Cornel West's public castigations of President Obama for not prioritizing the plight of the poor.

It’s not a stretch to say that Romney comments, about Americans who  feel that government "owes" them something as “victims”, and therefore possess a sense of entitlement, is code for Black people.

But Romney is right.

Many Progressive Black Folk, including myself do feel entitled to a modern day equivalent of the “40 acres and a Mule", that our ancestors were promised in 1865, in compensation for four hundred years of slavery, and another hundred-plus years of Jim Crow segregation, not including today’s continued climate of racism and discrimination.  And, what’s not part of the discussion, is that a lot of Black folk thought that when Senator Obama was sworn in as president, we would finally get some form of reparation for the years of civic and social death that we lived through, not just in slavery, but swinging from trees and railroad bridges as so much strange fruit, etc.  Many Black people do feel that we are owed something extra to correct the young Black bodies overflowing the jails and grave yards while being absent from institutions of higher learning and the work force. These conditions can all be traced back to the auction block.

Isn’t Occupy Wall Street about some form of “entitlement” for a class of people continuously ripped of by the financial and insurance industries (fully abetted by the U.S. Government) who looted and crashed our economy for their own profit?

So Romney called the teakettle black and instead of America thanking him for raising this important conversation, we say how dare he! Of course he didn’t raise this issue a progressive, but bully for him for bringing the argument any way because “entitlements” should be a huge part of the national debate, but it’s not.  Further, this is why the One Percent would never talk about any one being entitled.  Because they know that it's them who continue to manipulate and grow their abundant political and economic entitlements and would not want to draw attention to it from the mainstream populace.   In fact, I bet they  fare more disturbed over Romney’s remarks than the Democrats. 

It’s like that saying that “the best thing the devil ever did was to convince humans of his non existence” This is how the banking and financial industries are able to continue to rape, pillage, and plunder, every economic source in America.  Maybe the fact that Romney raised the issue means he’s a lot "closer" to the Democrats then the banking and financial Industries who greatly benefit no matter who is the President? He just  doesn't know that he's just another cog. A solid gold cog, but a cog none the less.

I Remain, Invisible,

Spook. 

Congressman Todd Akins, A Pleasant Distraction while Rome Burns

I'm reading Matt Taibbi's amazing book "Griftopia", which details how the leaders the America's financial institutions create numerous complicated schemes ( often to skirt regulations) to criminally and willfully defraud the American Tax Payer.  Over the last teen years, these criminal acts spawned a series of bubbles in our economy that burst, creating economic havoc through out the world

American International Group (AIG) is a text book case . And while the little people suffer, the corporations responsible get bail-out after bail-out, and no one goes to jail, allowing them to do the same thing over and over. The next result  was the most serious and recent total meltdown of our economy, and of course they got bailed-out, again.

Taibbi states that today's American financial leaders and "their political servants" have created a  merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government." They're no longer operating on our behalf, after they"long [ago] reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not worth saying and have taken on a new mission. To simply abscond with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed- out economy. They don't feed us, we feed them".

The irony that is more absurd than President Obama running as "change agent" and once elected by a tidal wave advocating reform, then immediately doing an "about face"and appointing the very same financial leaders to run both the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and serve as his Chiefs of Staffs, is that the Democratic voters continue to take it while blaming the Republicans, for his betrayal.

But Matt Taibbi makes another revealing point about our "democracy",  that we don't have it any more. "But since Americans require the illusions of self government,  we have elections, that are  effectively meaningless. Taibbi argues and I agree, that voters have been "gradually weaned off actually expecting their politicians to be responsive to them and more significantly ( if such is possible), elections have become  "entirely cultural war entertainment". Think about it, especially with Facebook. Democrats and Republicans are at it right now, posting childish political cartoons and trite slogans, that lambast the other side as evil or stupid.  Both sides, smug with satisfaction that they're "smarter". The thing is, as these tribes don't mix, no one is being educated outside of their own tribe, which make these inner tribal conversations, so much cheer leading as opposed to socratic dialogue. And, the fact that America is a sports addicted and an hyper consumer culture, makes us the perfect marks.

Look no further than Congressman Todd Akin. As egregious as this idiots recent remark about rape were, this story is on its 25th news cycle and still going strong, because liberals are titillated by this man. They are just sitting up in the cheap seats of the modern day Roman political circus, whooping it up, for "Team Blue"  as the Tsunami waves of home foreclosures, unemployment, and crime, burns down America while the investment bankers continue to loot all of what remains.

And of course this self righteous crowd was non too concerned, when Vice President Joe Biden, who has far more in common with Romney than us, joked about Romney wanting to put Black folks back in chains.

JP Morgan Chase Pimps The Name of Harriet Tubman aka Black Moses

JP Morgan Chase lead an elite group of financial institutions that looted our economy until it collapsed. We the American Tax Payer were then forced to bail them out under a lie that, "they are too big to fail", instead of the millions of Americans who continue to be foreclosed out of their homes.  JP Morgan Chase received a 400 billion dollar interests free loan, which was supposed to be relent to the American public to rebuild our economy.  But  JP Morgan Chase, along with the rest of the duplicitous financial institutions, are further wrecking the economy by barely lending because with todays lose regulation and favoritism extended to the financial industry,  it's not lucrative to make loans to "Jane" and "Jamal" citizen when they can investing their money in financial instruments that greatly increases the wealth of the wealthiest 1 percent. And these financial institutions continue to pillage and plunder America.

In the most recent example, a JP Morgan Chase  senior investment banker ( earning 100 million dollars a year), earlier this summer lost 2 billion dollars by the same illegal junk bond trading that helped sink our economy.  But JP Morgan Chase's  CEO Jamie Dimon, barely received a verbal reprimand from Congress partly because of his close relationship to President Obama.


The only thing that JP Morgan Chase is doing for America is a clever glossy public-relations ad campaign called "Chase Community Giving."

 JP Morgan Chase dolls out relatively small grants to non profits, which is considered a "win win".  The bank gets good publicity by giving away, what to them is the loose change left between the cushions of the leather couches and chairs in JP Morgan Chase's Wall Street offices. Financial institutions, who are expert in skirting laws put in place to make them accountable, also make these grants as ways to legally get around having to make loans. Banks don't like lending to the poor and working class because the real money is in corporate gambling. And as we know, when they lose, we bail them out.

I've been watching these campaigns and JP Morgan Chase's are an extremely seductive subterfuge, as they continue to siphon up more tax payer's dollars. The most effective ads are their Face Book ads, featuring all-American", vanilla, main-street, apple pie pictures, and tear jerker blurbs hailing the great noblesse oblige charitable giving of the noble, JP Morgan Chase.  And since so many liberals work and volunteer for non profits organizations; they cannot stop themselves from joining in on the communal fawning and praise, or beseech for their causes in the comment box, or at the very least clicking the "Like" tab with their browsers on the JP Morgan Chase Charitable Giving Face book page.
in spite of all the damage that  JP Morgan Chase continues to wrought through out the world.

In the latest and most dastardly ad below,  JP Morgan Chase Community Giving actually pimps the name of Harriet Tubman, the former slave who escaped to Canada yet returned to the south numerous times to rescue and spirit away hundreds of slaves, as the most famous conductor of The Under Ground Rail Road. Further irony is that we know exactly where JP. Morgan Chase stood on the slavery issue as they accepted and sold thousands of slaves as loan collateral.

1. Chase Community Giving

   Friday via Chase Community Giving

   Harriet Tubman, one of our nation’s greatest humanitarians said: “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” Share her inspirational words today!

   

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The Obama Myth of Unprecedented Congressional Obstruction

As the election nears, Black middle class and White Liberals continue to proffer excuse for President Obama’s abandonment of his mandate for change and his support of the American financial and corporate Empire and Military Industrial Complex.   

The major excuse is that "unprecedented congressional obstruction" has greatly limited his power far more than any other President, and the reason for this obstruction is due to his race and because he’s a progressive.

 This is propaganda and political subterfuge by President Obama’s by Alexrodian spin doctors.

I don't admire Ronald Reagan like President Obama does, but I do agree with him that Ronald Reagan was one of America’s greatest transformative presidents. When Reagan assumed the presidency, with an eye on history, he immediately incorporated the right wing political and Christian religious movement into his government as a potent political force that swept congress and changed America

 President Obama was in position to do the same with the movement that swept him into office. And this movement, though fledgling was a more potent force than Reagan's. And, President Obama’s movement was both national, and after eight years of Bush’s disastrous international policy, global. With these potent forces, President Obama could have realigned America to be a truly great nation based upon our collective experience of oppression, subjugation, and struggle.

But, instead of incorporating this movement into his young administration, President Obama immediately shut them out and brought in the bureaucratic cabal behind Bush’s corporate bailouts, the outsourcing of American jobs overseas, and other policies of extending benefits and protection of the American plutocratic class at the expense of every one else, and further empowering the military industrial complex.  

Finally, what was also behind the Reagan Revolution wasn’t a mandate for change, but after the malaise of Jimmy Carter compiled with mass anxiety of Russia gaining nuclear superiority, white America wanted the fatherly version of John Wayne and the Marlbro Man.

During the campaign of Barack Obama, because of the financial crimes of Corporate America and the plutocratic class, and George Bush’s war in Iraq, the average American finally matured somewhat, and for the first time raised their heads from the sand and questioned if something was desperately wrong in America. Obama crystalized this message and formed a verbal contract with America to be a change agent, yet once in Office President Obama reneged on this contact and turned his back on a progressive movement that could have become deeper and more powerful than the Tea Party Movement and could have changed the world.